


An Unexpected Announcement

by zephsomething



Series: Surviving the War [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 05:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12550116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephsomething/pseuds/zephsomething
Summary: Draco gets his bad news from the front page of the Daily Prophet





	An Unexpected Announcement

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a lot shorter but I like it like this?

When they came back to England, back to their manor now that it had been cleared out by Auroras, Draco fully expected some kind of ambush. He expected little to no trial and a direct one way trip to Azkaban. There was a large part of him that would not have blamed anyone for it.

What he didn’t expect was for his father to leave in the dead of night and be in the papers the next morning. For him to find out possibly the most important thing in his life because he found his mother crying over the morning’s Daily Prophet. His father’s picture was plastered on the front page, he looked tired, exhausted even, under a headline that declared LUCIUS MALFOY PLEADS GUILTY, DECLARES INNOCENCE OF WIFE AND SON.

He dropped onto the couch beside his mother and stared at the headline. Disbelief at war with anger in his gut but then his mother had turned to bury her face in his shoulder and grief beat both of them. His father had used any connections or pull he had in what was left of the ministry to make sure he was the only one in their family who would have to go to Azkaban for what they’d done in the last few years. By the time he and his mother had pulled themselves together an owl was knocking at the window with a thick letter from the ministry. The first line started ‘In regards to Lucius Malfoy’ and Draco didn’t read further than that. His mother spent the rest of the day reading and rereading the letter but Draco went around the house shooting cleaning spells around like they were curses, like if he removed the marks left with enough force it would wipe the memories out of his home.

Sometime after the sun had started its downward arc, but before it got at all dark, Draco gestured a little too roughly with his wand and his sleeve fell down showing part of the mark that had been burned onto his inner arm. He jerked his sleeve down and stood for a moment overcome with a black sort of feeling as he remembered how Proud he’d been of the same mark two years ago, how little he’d known back then.

“Come eat something.” He mother touched his elbow gently and he looked up at her. If it weren’t for the slight redness around her eyes you’d never have known how much of the day she’d spent crying. As he followed her Draco wondered how he’d ever missed the way she wore strength around herself like a cloak.

Dinner was quiet as both of them had so much on their minds. At one point his mother reached out to pick up some spices and Draco noticed, properly for the first time, that unlike he and his father, his mother’s arms were bare of his mark. A wave of something like awe rolled through him, followed by something like shame that he’d gone his entire life without knowing the first thing about his mother. He made a mental note to change that

 


End file.
